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Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
Hardcover – 256 pages
ISBN-10: 1591396190
ISBN-13: 9781591396192
Book Description
Winning by not competing: a fresh approach to strategy Since the dawn of the industrial age, companies have engaged in head-to-head competition in search of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation. Yet these hallmarks of competitive strategy are not the way to create profitable growth in the future. In a book that challenges everything you thought you knew about the requirements for strategic success, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne argue that cutthroat competition results in nothing but a bloody red ocean of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Based on a study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than a hundred years and thirty industries, the authors argue that lasting success comes not from battling competitors, but from creating “blue oceans”: untapped new market spaces ripe for growth. Such strategic moves—which the authors call “value innovation”—create powerful leaps in value that often render rivals obsolete for more than a decade. Blue Ocean Strategy presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any company can use to create and capture blue oceans. A landmark work that upends traditional thinking about strategy, this book charts a bold new path to winning the future.Latest Discussions
Book Reviews
This book argues that instead of joining the crowd of similar products and competing on price, companies should focus on value innovation, by identifying the factors that the industry competes on and changing its value proposition - flipping factors to serve non-core customers (e.g. wine connoisseurs may appreciate wine complexity, but novices might not), and even introducing new factors (e.g. ease of choice of wine). They demonstrate how to draw a strategy canvas for the industry.
The book then goes on to how to go about creating a new market, looking across alternative industries, for example, but most of all looking at non-customers and identifying factors they might appreciate. For example, many people are put off by the difficulty of hitting a ball in golf, but by producing an extra-large club, more might be drawn into the game.
There is a guide to pricing, and then a rather odd chapter on "overcoming key organizational hurdles". This is actually a guide to changing strategy in general, not just going from red oceans to blue oceans. In any case, the main takeaway here is to be transparent and inclusive in getting employees on board.
Overall, a thought-provoking book that will make you think hard about how to differentiate your product/service from the rest of the pack. (read less)
This book argues that instead of joining the crowd of similar products and competing on price, companies should focus on value innovation, by identifying the factors that the industry competes on and changing its value proposition - flipping factors to serve non-core customers (e.g. wine connoisseurs may appreciate wine complexity, but novices might not), and even introducing new factors (e.g. ease of choice of wine). They demonstrate how to draw a strategy canvas for the industry.
The book then goes on to how to go about creating a new market, looking across alternative industries, for example, but most of all looking at non-customers and identifying factors they might appr... (read more)
A core message that Blue Ocean Strategy brings out would be to always move away from competition, create your own unique market space and make competition irrelevant to your product. I chanced upon this book years ago during my Business and IT Innovation class back in college and the message stayed within me until now. There is absolutely no point in trying to engage in a price war, creating a 'bloody ocean', when you can find ways to innovate your product, re-postion, re-design or make it even more relevant to your target audience. A simple logic that many failed to embrace.
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